In recent years, television receivers allowing viewing of digital television broadcasting, such as digital terrestrial broadcasting, broadcasting satellite (BS) digital television broadcasting, and communication satellite (CS) digital television broadcasting, have become increasingly popular. In a broadcast receiving apparatus, such as that television receiver, in switching a channel or switching a device connected using an external input terminal, typically, a blank time of approximately two or three seconds is present.
This is because reproduction processing performed from a channel switching operation to displaying of video complies with the specifications defined in integrated services digital broadcasting terrestrial (ISDB-T), advanced television services committee (ATSC), or digital video broadcasting (DVB).
For such specifications, for example, when a user switches a channel, data that identifies the channel from a radio wave sent from a broadcast facility is acquired in a broadcast receiving apparatus, and video data corresponding to the desired channel is acquired on the basis of the acquired channel identification data. At this time, it is necessary for the broadcast receiving apparatus to acquire various data elements as the channel identification data. However, because the data elements are output from the broadcast facility in different periods, acquiring necessary various data elements and identifying the desired channel is time-consuming.
Accordingly, to shorten a blank time, for example, it is necessary to change the specifications of digital television broadcasting so as to more efficiently acquire channel identification data.
And, these days, the functionality of integrated circuits (ICs) and applications used in an output stage in a broadcast receiving apparatus is extended and they can process various kinds of processing. Therefore, for example, in switching a device connected using various external input terminals, a blank time tends to be longer.
Incidentally, during a blank time, muting that displays only a black image is commonly performed. However, in the case where a black image is displayed during a blank time, a user does not know when video is displayed, so a problem arises in which the user feels the length of a time up to the displaying of the video is longer than in traditional analog television broadcasting.
Thus, to solve this problem, methods of displaying a different image or video during muting have been proposed previously. For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-41197 describes a method of smoothly switching a channel by displaying a previously stored image, such as a still picture, during a blank time from channel switching to video displaying.
However, with the method described in the above-described Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-41197, only a different image or video is simply displayed. Therefore, a user does not know how much time has elapsed since channel switching or how long it would take to display video since channel switching. This leads to a problem of placing a psychological strain on the user.